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The necessity of animal testing
The necessity of animal testing
What are the benefits of animal testing
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Despite many decades of animal testing such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, we still not have reliable and fully effective cures but we wasted huge amount of money and animal life. Also, misleading safety tests in animals directly hurt humans, there was a famous animal testing accident call "elephant man trial", the experiment originally manipulated the body 's immune system to treat auto-immune diseases such as arthritis. At the beginning, researchers had high hopes for it after monkeys injected with it showed no problems. Finally, several of the men suffered permanent organ damage, and one man’s head swelled up so horribly that British tabloids refer to the case as the ‘elephant man trial’(Felix
"Animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advanced of the last century" (www.pro-test.org). This quote obviously states that animal research has benefitted humans very greatly and helped in every major medical advance from the entire last century. This is basically proving how well animal testing has worked for the people. " Farm animals, household pets, wild species, and endangered species are all benefitting from research conducted through animals. There are vaccines for rabies, distemper, tetanus, parvo virus, and numerous other illnesses in cats, dogs, and countless other domesticated animals" (www.pro-test.org.uk).
According to the Biomedical Research Association, animal testing has led to almost all revolutionary medical discoveries that have occurred in the past century (“CBRA: Fact Sheet” 2). One of these notable discoveries was that of the polio vaccine; with the polio vaccine, the number of cases diminished from hundreds of thousands to only hundreds, in the course of 25 years (“Poliomyelitis”). Another discovery, that with the help of animal testing has saved multiple lives, is that of insulin. The invention of insulin is a necessity for survival to those diagnosed with diabetes, and it’s all thanks to experiments done on animals (Badyal and Chetna 258). In addition to these, many other medical breakthroughs have occurred because of animal testing; just a few of these include the treatment of tetanus, leprosy, tuberculosis, brucellosis, and Prontosil, one of the first antibacterial treatments (Badyal and Chetna 258).
Rats, for example, have DNA that very closely resembles ours, which makes them an easy route to use for medical research and commercial products that need to be tested in order to be declared acceptable for human use. Plus, in addition, rats are not even close to be an endangered species which leaves a lot of room for us to test on them. Experiments in which dogs had their pancreas's removed led directly to the discovery of insulin, critical to saving the lives of diabetics, and the dogs lived. " Animal research has also contributed to major advances in understanding and treating conditions such as breast cancer, brain
Things such as vaccines, antibiotics, surgical procedures, and other approaches developed in animals for human use, are now commonly employed throughout veterinary medicine. Pets, livestock, and animals in zoos live longer, more comfortable, and healthier lives as a result of animal research. Tons of animals have been saved due to the fact that they've been tested on before. “If vaccines were not tested on animals, millions of animals would have died from rabies, distemper, feline leukemia and other major diseases”. This goes to shows that not only human benefit from research on animals but they do as
The advances and breakthroughs of our medical research continues to amaze us and save lives, both humans and animals, so why should we slow down now? "we live longer and healthier lives due to vaccinations, better drugs, and improved information about nutrition and disease prevention—longer lives are the result of animal research." Experimenting on animals my seem inhumane, but without animals more lives will be lost due to disease then saved if animals are set free from laboratories. Some may argue that there are many more ways to advance research studies and find vaccines for diseases than to use animals
Those who argue that animal experimentation is necessary claim that treatments for diseases like polio, diabetes, hepatitis B, several types of cancer, malaria, and tuberculosis wouldn’t have been formulated without the use of animal research. They also claim that the complexities of the human organ system cannot be replicated to the fullest extent
Dogs have also contributed to the research and development of open heart surgery. Critics say that experimenting on animals is cruel and unethical, what those critics do not know is that " at least 85 HIV/AIDs vaccines have been cured" (Source
Animal experimentation has been an easy and ethically acceptable way to research and test medicines and treatments for humans since the time of the ancient Greeks. Animals opened the door for the scientists and philosophers of old to learn things about the human body that were previously explained with magic and superstition. Naturally, science has come a long way since the ancient Greeks. Today, we have a whole host of medical resources at our disposal, which begs the question: Do we truly need animals in medical research anymore? Not only that, but the practices with animals at thousands of labs across the United States have been notoriously vague for years.
Yes, animals have been used in the past but, with the use of computers we can save lives, and make many more discoveries in the medical field. Animals don’t deserve to be kept in cages and be constantly observed and poked at. Thousands of animal lives are wasted every year and we can stop that by stopping testing on animals. Dvorsky, George. " Technological Alternatives Can End the Experimental Use of Animals.
By the nineteenth century, animal experimentation was more commonly used to receive a better understanding of the “pathology…,disease, progression, …diagnosis and prognosis” (Franco). Millions of lives were saved due to discoveries of “vitamins, hormones, antibiotics, safe blood transfusion, vaccines, insulin, hemodialysis, chemo and radiotherapy for cancer, the eradication of smallpox,… advanced means of diagnostic and new surgical techniques” all of which were all possible because of animal experimentation (Franco). In 1912, an article titled, “Solving Medical Mysteries by Help of Animals” was published in the New York Times (Metz). The author, Metz, was a businessman and politician from New York who used this article to publicly inform society that testing on small animals in research could benefit society in extensive ways. This article described a scene in which animals were segregated into rooms and used as experimental subjects to discover how to stop the spread of epidemics and diseases that were occurring within society (Metz).
Of the 108 Nobel Prize recipients in the Physiology or Medicine categories, 96 have used animal models in their research. These recipients were able to display these models because of their testing on the certain animals. Many of these prize winners have inspired others to test animals to make medical advancements. Animals should be continued to be used in research testing because it leads to more vaccinations, it leads to a better economy, and has led to many awards an advancements.
Many debilitating diseases and conditions have been cured and prevented using vaccinations that were tested on animals. For example, Emil von Behring performed an experiment on guinea pigs that helped form the vaccine for diphtheria (Soft Schools). The significance of this experiment helped von Behring earn a Nobel Prize in Physiology (Soft Schools). Following von Behring’s findings, Edgar Adrian used frogs to confirm the specific way that the brain sends signals to different parts of the body (Soft Schools). Advancements in the understanding of diabetes, tuberculosis, and polio, along with the formation of anesthetics all were successful with the help of animal testing (Soft Schools).
Leukemia used to be a death sentence with a survival rate of 4%, but now, because of testing, there is an 80% chance of survival. These odds are much more pleasant than the ones before research. People have gotten help for many diseases because of the research and testing done on animals. Not only does testing help humans, it also leads to developing life saving medical treatments for animals as well.
Moreover, animals are used to develop medical treatments, check the safety of any products before people can use it and in science education. Therefore, without using animals in the medical and scientific studies the products and all the medicine would be based on theory only. Furthermore, people will use something that may cause serious damages to them. Animal testing has provided many